


The Imperfections Of The King

by bmouse



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bilbo the Nerdy Scholar, Gen, M/M, Obligatory Dwarves Bathing Fic, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bmouse/pseuds/bmouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo Baggins, adventurer and sometime scholar has a notebook, an embarrassing half of which is devoted to scientifically valuable but increasingly personal observations about the leader of the Company. He strongly suspects he may be losing his objectivity.<br/>Loosely related to "Bilbo Baggins' Observations Regarding Dwarves"</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Imperfections Of The King

The Imperfections of the King.

While Bilbo is probably not among the first scholars frustrated by the subject of his study he is sure that it would put a sizeable dent in his scientific objectivity if he confessed to wanting to push Thorin Oakenshield down a well. 

To his credit it would be a short well. Dried up, possibly even with long cushiony grass on the bottom since wet boots could hardly improve his haughty temper. Overall, water had an adverse affect on dwarves. Though Dori hadn't re-attempted to petition Gandalf to adjust the weather, Bilbo noticed that drizzle would accumulate in Oin’s ear trumpet until it overflowed to the accompaniment of impressive and varied invective and had Nori scowling fit to frighten an Orc and nervously brushing a hand over his elaborate braids as the overall upright quality of his hair diminished in the damp. 

Even Bofur, whose mine-work had made rain a novelty grew quiet as the ear flaps of his hat got soggy enough to droop parallel to his mustache. The issue at present was shelter, and how His (Relative, though Bilbo was grudgingly forced to admit statistically Above Average) Highness didn't seem to see their need for it during what Ham Gamgee would have called a cats-dogs-and-cows downpour. Nevermind that Ori didn't seem to know the meaning of wind breaking layers and the fellow parchment lover in Bilbo cringed and fidgeted in his saddle as the leather of the young dwarf's book bag grew dark and drippy.

When they finally stopped Bilbo, much to his horror, found that the ink in his his topmost copy of ‘Edible Herbs of the Eastern Mountains’ had /run/ and he could now no longer be sure if he was garnishing his salads with libidar alensis( crunchy, succulent ) or libidar purentis( laxative ) and even certain observations on the endearing characteristics of Thorin’s red, wet ears could not save him from Bilbo's vast but sadly invisible ire. 

In the morning however, he was forced to revise his theory on dwarves and water. Yes a stationary vs vertical comparison was clearly in order, the little creek and it’s attendant pools had swelled with the rain and was now cheerfully splashing over with the addition of several bodies. Currently Bilbo was trying to find his own little pool, it was easy enough to tell who was currently washing where by the impromptu clotheslines that sprouted in the nearby bushes. These held damp coats, vests and long underwear in such precise arrangements that all that seemed missing was the dwarf to fill them out. 

Besides, as fascinating as the whole ‘Adventure’ business was generally purported to be from his first-hand account things were sometimes less ‘glorious’ and ‘life-threatening’ and rather more like being in the center of a loud noisy family gathering of someone else’s cousins that you hadn’t seen in a quite a while and who were very fine fellows but in whose company the solitary Baggins occasionally chafed.

Maybe while he reproduced his usual results on Hobbit buoyancy the sensible part of him would be found to outweigh a little Took voice that suggested this was the perfect time to gather data on Dwarf anatomy and drown it in the creek.

Upstream he went, stealthily as a hobbit might and when he spied a promising cluster of bush-topped boulders that hinted at a pool on the other side and he was so eager to get the itchy feeling out of his hair that he found himself scaling the side of one such boulder much quicker than the dignity of a middle-aged scholar would usually allow. 

“Good knees,” he thought to himself as he reached the top “jolly well done” and then promptly stepped into something, that while soft was definitely not moss. It was a coat, actually. A fur-and-blue coat, Thorin’s coat. Oh dear. He stepped off it, quickly but not before his traitorous toes had dug in and a sort of pleasant shiver had run up his spine. Well no harm done, he had looked at it before and wondered if it was any softer than Arabella Took’s famous sheepskin rug. It was.

“Must get sheepskin rug for Bag End when I get back”, “if I get back” his mind chattered as his feet edged slowly, slowly towards the bushes. Yes, his knees suddenly felt rather unequal to climbing _down_ the boulder some other route was clearly necessary. Maybe he could just crawl forward under the greenery until he found a root to help him climb down. Or he could reach the edge of the boulder and ever-so-slightly peer over to see the pool, which he did and just as he was about to turn back his treacherous, curious eyes found the figure in it.

Thorin looked larger without his clothes. As if royal bearing also denoted a certain right to disregard perfectly sound theories like the conservation of mass. Minus the heavy weight of cloth and leather and fur he still seemed solid as a boulder to the point where the little currents of the stream flowed around him like a crowd of courtiers making way. Yes, as he’d been given reason to suspect, the dwarf’s arms were as thick as Bilbo’s thighs, but the clothes had hidden something unexpected. Below his shoulders and arms, hard and grooved with muscle like a fine wooden carving, was the king’s equally-impressive stomach - which rounded out his silhouette with a pleasant curve and wouldn’t have looked out of place on Burfel Proudfoot who had won every ale drinking contest in the Shire since he was old enough to reach the tap.

The skin over it was tight as a drum and speckled with little black hairs. It looked impossibly soft. Oh no. This was clearly - Bilbo thought with rising panic - rather worse than the bit with the ears.

He desperately tried to turn his mind to useful matters like how to retreat from his perch before he was noticed which predictably resulted in no movement whatsoever and a useless tangent about weather a nice belly on a fellow was errr. also a sign of ahem. virility, that is, culturally speaking and since it really wouldn’t do to be caught with a face redder than a summer tomato he resolved to lie still until his limbic system behaved.

Which is why he was still lying there like a log, slightly delirious and trying to redirect his thoughts to how Dwarf back muscles seemed to attach slightly differently to the scapula (only marginally better for the state of his face, sad to say) when Fili and Kili popped up on either side of him like two curiously stealthy corks. 

“Ah, Mr. Baggins, fancy meeting you here. Pity that one’s taken eh?” Kili whispered straight into his ear.

Bilbo’s long-unused ‘I’ve been nicked’ reflexes were still in excellent synaptic form because he found himself with a mouthful of sleeve just in time to muffle his squeak. Neither of the brothers seemed to notice, though Fili did look over the rim and for a second seemed to fix Bilbo with a long considering look.

"Yes, a bit fond of the barley our Uncle. Didn't Master Balin say - there once was a village so poor they didn’t have a pot to piss in ‘til he mended it. So when it came time to settle up they gave him a full barrel of their last Autumn Ale which he got over the ridge just to prove he could but when he came back down all that was left was the barrel! I suppose he'll have to switch to mead when we get back Erebor and he's officially King and all, beer being terribly common." Then he began to chuckle so hard the beads in his mustache clicked together in an alarmingly loud fashion.  
"Oh but I wouldn't tell him that Mr Baggins, he might call the whole thing off and then you'd be out of a job!" 

Kili huffed.

“You must excuse my brother, talking about Uncle like that! Skinny thing that he is he's a bit insecure. And of course there’s his chest hair, - hasn't quite come in yet, quite sad" he whispered with all the discretion of a small gleeful avalanche "it must’ave run out of steam at the neck!" 

"And if only yours, dear brother could be slightly more equal to the task of colonizing your chin." Fili deflected brightly but with a warning gleam in his eyes. 

A very familiar litany of complaints concerning each other’s defective looks, character, un-dwarfly timid snoring and other such matters was now being volleyed back and forth over Bilbo’s head, leaving him quite contentedly to his thoughts and his unbroken line-of-sight.

So, Thorin Oakenshield had the arms and shoulders of a Forge-God and the stomach of a tavern regular. Haughty, regal Thorin Oakenshield liked cheap, fresh beer. It didn’t seem to fit, but here it was, confirmed and irrefutable and like any scholar worth his custom copper pen nibs Bilbo now had to wrestle with the fact that some of his underlying assumptions about his subject must have been wrong. Suddenly he remembered how Thorin had eaten the plainest, most common food that had been left over after the Company’s raid on the pantry, how his saddlebags were thinner than Bofur’s. As Bilbo had stood on it, the rich collar of his coat had been fluffy and full, but the lining was thin, some of the fine blue threads were fraying.

Thorin Oakenshield who could lead a desperate charge and carry a barrel his own size for seven leagues and lay a charging bull flat with an iron knuckled punch( if Dwalin’s more _colorful_ stories could be believed) was real but ‘Thorin Oakenshield, King’ was a fabrication on par with ‘Bilbo Baggins, Professional Burglar’. The dates in Balin’s stories were telling. Thorin hadn't been a proper prince for nearly 70 years, and that was twice as long as the time since Bilbo had tracked mud across his mother's glory box and dragged poor Ham off to the woods for elf-spotting. Somewhere inside him Bilbo knew that if he hadn't stepped out his door after Gandalf and the Company that he would have not changed a whit, a Baggins through and through and hardly moving in his worn groove from bed to breakfast table to study to the smoking bench outside his door. Perhaps after eighty he would have exhibited his father's obsession with daily dusting or buffing the silver dining service four times a week just in case they had guests, these little sedentary madnesses were hereditary after all. 

How much courage had it taken for the wandering blacksmith to grasp at his birthright again, to dream of a crown? Knowing the whole world was ahead and largely arrayed against him? 

A strange reverence had come over him, the same feeling that had left him with a notebook an embarrassing half of which was devoted to scientifically valuable but increasingly personal observations about the leader of the Company and he desperately wanted his least-damp sketchbook as if this newfound fragility, and Bilbo’s newfound understanding could be penned down between the curves of shoulder and waist. Of course sketchbook was back at their camp in the cave, and it was for the best, he had seen more than he should through honest observation and his objectivity was already thoroughly compromised. He knew that it would take a long time to stop looking at Thorin and seeing…

Above his head the bickering was getting louder, his knees would just have to make do with the original way up the boulder. Sighing softly he cast one last look down at the pool and all breath, all notions of objectivity fled. In the stream Thorin had bent down to rinse his hair and presented to Bilbo, above thighs replete with kissable stretch marks, the loveliest mathematically perfect plump arse in all of Middle Earth.

 

-fin-

**Author's Note:**

> Confession: I am really, really bored with physically perfect!Thorin. Dwarves are one of the few races where stocky bodies and a bit of fat could believably be part of the aesthetic and yet lots of people insist on giving everyone six packs...


End file.
